Steve Cournoyer has coached 38 different teams, from AAU basketball to 3rd grade kids, primarily in baseball and basketball. He has authored an excellent resource called The Inspired Coach – A guide to inspiring teams, players, and parents from the inside out. He has served our country in the military for over 10 years and worked as a medic in the operating room.

Coach the parents on how to cheer – if they give conflicting messages it is very confusing to the kid. ‘Cheer to inspire instead of cheering to instruct’

Players

Ask the players ‘Why are you here?’

Discuss their philosophy and the philosophy the team is going to have

Create some glue to pull them together:

A team name (that is different than your given team name)

A team song

A team cheer (Boston Celtics’ championship team used ‘Umbootu’)

Self-confidence – Unleashing fearless players

Coach doesn’t talk about winning with his players. He does talk about it with his coaches, but not with the players. A kid should never feel like it was their fault the team lost a game.

Teach the kids: ‘Always be surprised when you miss a shot (or strike out, or miss a tackle.)’ “Fail miserably, but learn from it, then be surprised when it happens again”

Don’t use conditioning as a punishment. ‘The harder you work in practice, the funner the games are.’ You want the players to believe that their conditioning has a distinct purpose and challenge them to bring their best to it.

Best team builders

For basketball – takes 5 players on one side of the gym and 5 on the other, then puts 17 basketballs in the middle, and asks them to pass the balls and get all the balls going. It’s great because they fail miserably at first and laugh about the struggle, but usually by the end of the year they start to get it

The One that got away

Listen to your assistant coaches and give them specific assignments during games so you can all catch different things going on

Best borrowed/stolen idea

‘If you’re teaching 12 year-olds, and you treat them like 16 year-olds, they will play like 14 year-olds.’

Favorite coaching book/quote

Quote: ‘If you change the way you look at things, what you look at changes’ – Mahatma Gandhi

The Inspired Coach book

Parting Advice

If you find ways to go out of your way to help your players fall in love with the game, you are going to be able to teach that game with greater precision.

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